Light of Love Day

Light of Love Day on 25 December 2025 included a traditional talk by Joel on the topic of love. This year's talk focused on the importance of loving your enemies and how to practice it. Watch the recording. (See also the follow-up talk with Joel and Merry Song discussing how to love your enemies when they are violent: Watch)

The celebration also included readings by Merry Song, Laura Betty, and Wesley Lachman, as well as several songs by the CSS Sacred Singers, including one of their greatest hits, "Buddha of Compassion."

When is Art a Spiritual Practice? A Talk by Merry Song

CSS teacher Merry Song hosted an engaging dialogue with two featured artists, Ken Paul and Niraja Lorenz, both long-time Center members. Lively discussion with the audience was a key part of this presentation.  Participants shared their insights into these meaningful questions:
1. What do we mean by spiritual practice when it comes to art?
2. What illumination does the spiritual practitioner/artist gain from devotion to art?
3. How do artists use acceptance/rejection as a means to illuminate the Story of I?

CSS member Ken Paul is Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon, Department of Art. His printmaking is represented in many private and public collections and has been shown extensively.

CSS member Niraja Lorenz is an award-winning fiber artist whose quilts are exhibited around the world. In 2019 she received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts which provided her the confidence to move further into the art world.

The video includes many examples of art by Ken and Niraja, along with a creative 8-minute feature at the end. Watch the recording

Zoom Awakening Group ~ Dreaming Day and Night 2026

 ZAG, Zoom Awakening Group with Merry Song, has completed 11 weeks of sessions focusing on dreamwork and creative writing for cultivating awareness.  More sessions may be planned this spring and summer.  In a recent “free dreaming” writing assignment, the group explored how dreams are infused with emotions and symbolic objects.   Free dreaming is a method used to allow dream stories to surface while one is awake.  Below are three examples from participants.  In each case, the writer starts with the phrase “In this dream…” and then free writes for ten minutes focusing on an emotion and a material object.  They are instructed to stop immediately at the end of ten minutes and to add the line: “And then I wake up.” Later, the writer can analyze the symbols and then question what the Cosmic Dreamer or subconscious may be pointing to.

 Jude wrote~

            In this dream, I feel anxious because I have lost my Corelle Vision pot—my favorite pot, amber-colored clear glass.  I love to watch steel-cut oats bubbling and simmering through the sidewalls of that pot.  The dancing simmering bubbles are just mesmerizing.  Why cook in a pot where you can’t see what’s actually happening?

            I have no sooner had that thought when three steel pots come clattering out of the cupboard and clap me on the ears.  “How dare you!” the large soup pot says.  “We cook in the privacy of our walls unlike that hussy pot that shows off her alls!”

            A small sauce pan pipes in with, “The Vision cookware has no shame, and it shows!”

            I’m amazed to be berated by my cookware.  I had no idea they all had such strong feelings about each other.  I’m anxious to get my meal preparations underway, but when I reach for a midsized pot, it slaps my hand with its handle, chiding me, saying, “I knew you preferred that shiny glass ass over…And then I wake up.

 Wesley wrote~

In this dream, I feel angry because I have lost my black vest. I depend on this vest to hold tissues on the left and cell phone on the right. It's not in the laundry it's not in the corner it's not in the closet. It's not in the living room and I don't see how I can really operate without it. I don't think anyone would take it or play a trick on me. Where could it be? I have looked everywhere. Did I take it off when I visited my friend? Did I leave it in the park? No, I'm sure I didn’t. How about in the car? Did I leave it in the car? I look but I don't see it in the car. Oh, wait, am I wearing it? Yes, I am. I've been angry at myself for leaving my vest on my shoulders. I sit down to think about this. How could I get so angry about something that I'm wearing? And who was I angry at--myself? And then I wake up.

 Shannon wrote~

In this dream, I feel cold-hearted
because someone has stolen my …
Favorite pair of scissors
The ones daddy left me
In my very own tool box
He made one for each
Of his 3 daughters
In this dream I go to my
Precious and beloved
Daddy tool box
And when I open it
I know I had set them on the top tray
I frantically search
The entire box
Only to suddenly
Realize the blatant truth
My tool box has been invaded
My mind races back
Must’ve been that time
I left it for a moment
In the parking lot
At the beach
I feel steel in my heart
Who could…
Who would…
Stealing
Grief grips
My cold heart
And suddenly it begins to melt
This hate is a momentary
Stranger
I take the precious box
Filled with daddy’s love and essence
And set it in the outdoor
Closet where it lives
As I do so
Something dreamy
And strange
Occurs
For there
On the shelf
Beside it
Where they must have slipped
Are the treasured scissors
My heart leaps
There is a moment of
Reckoning
For once again
A story
That I believe
Has taken over
Usurped my being
And everything falls away
My anger my sorrow
Only daddy’s love
And then I wake up

Intensive: Injustice and the Great Perfection

By special request, on Saturday 14 February 2026, Andrea and Matt led a one-day intensive (Andrea in the morning, Matt in the afternoon) on how dealing with the relative truth of injustice can be a stepping stone to Realizing the Absolute Truth of the Great Perfection. They presented teachings and practices to help turn our perceptions of injustice in the outside world into opportunities for spiritual practice for the benefit of ourselves and the world.

Guest speaker Michael Dreiling

Michael Dreiling

Guest speaker Michael Dreiling gave a talk at CSS on Sunday, March 1, 2026, titled "Gandhi's Nonviolence: Threat Force to Soul Force." How can love become a form of power in a world shaped by fear? In this talk and guided reflection, Michael Dreiling explores Gandhi's satyagraha, the inner work of nonviolence, and contemporary research on nonviolent change, asking how inner work practices, such as empathetic presence, can empower the outer work of personal and social transformation.

Michael Dreiling is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. He embraces practical wisdom from the sciences as well as the teachings of mystics, melding inner work with good living, conviviality, and justice. Watch the recording.

Illuminating Moments

“Borrowed Light of the Sun” Photo by Merry Song

For a submission, write an episode that led you to an illuminating moment.  Try to be specific and show what happened.  Your submission must be 350 words or less, equal to one full double-spaced typed page.  Your name and title of the piece are not included in your word count. 

Illuminating Moment by Robin Retherford

            For years I’ve had a relative who seems to treat me less favorably than others but denies it.  I’ve worried what could I possibly have done wrong? and blamed myself for the imaginary issue, frustrated that I couldn’t figure it out.  I found myself telling someone, “You know, I’m at the point where I’d like to just ask a psychic to explain what’s going on.”  

            After thinking about it, I decided to play my own psychic.  I sat down with pen and paper and titled it “A Reading with Pat” (a psychic I know) and proceeded to outline the whole situation in an objective way in language that I believe he would choose.  I could hear his voice in my head as I wrote, and what “he” had to say was refreshing. 

            When taking my guilt, shame, and personal story out of it, I saw clearly I wasn’t the problem and no one was.  I could see her and other family (including myself) as victims of The Story of I, playing out our broken dramas without there being any personal meaning behind it.  I saw ideas I held about what roles family members were supposed to play and realized that, like me, they’re just people who happen to be stuck in a role by circumstance who just like me never got a guidebook about how to do it right.  Since then, I find myself more often accepting the relationship as it is than resisting it.  It feels good, more peaceful. 

 Whisper of Wisdom: An Illuminating Moment by Merry Song

            I walked into the meditation session late.  I felt I had special privileges because I was on the retreat center staff trying to serve the retreat as well as attend it.  It was a hot summer day and I had been out helping to unload a truckload of vegetables into the kitchen.  When I was through, I didn't bother to change my clothes even though a sign had gone up on the meditation hall door that said Cover your knees and shoulders.  Wearing my blue short shorts, I went into the hall, walked up the center aisle, and took my cushion at the feet of the teacher, Ruth Denison, an elder woman whom I admired deeply for her sharp teachings.

            I could feel the teacher leaning forward, bringing her face close to my ear.  I kept my eyes shut and sat firmly in my lotus position.  The teacher was about to say something to me privately—a special teaching perhaps that may cause my immediate enlightenment!

            "Your pants are too short," she whispered.

            My eyes flew open.  In my lotus position I could see that my shorts looked more like underpants.  I turned hot-faced from embarrassment and my whole body tensed to bolt out of the room.  But the teacher put her firm hand on my shoulder to calm me.  She then dropped her long, silky maroon scarf into my lap which sufficiently covered me up.

            Later the teacher's assistant told me there was a reason for the sign posted at the door.  Some meditators had complained that Merry Song’s "beautiful bare legs" had been causing them a major distraction.  I suddenly realized that I had wanted to distract everyone because I was hungry for attention.  I was sorry I had been so selfish and I thanked the teacher for her discrete whisper which had awakened me from my ego. I hadn't realized I was so asleep.

Recent Videos

Check out the CSS Channel on YouTube for video recordings of past meetings, including the following recent videos:

• Joel: Longing and the End of Spiritual Practice Watch
• Joel: 2025 Light of Love Day talk: How to Love your Enemy. Watch
• Joel: Q&A with Merry Song: How to Love an Enemy who is Violent. Watch
• Guest speaker Michael Dreiling: Gandhi's nonviolent soul force. Watch
• Merry Song: When is Art a Spiritual Practice? Watch